Environmental policy integration (EPI) is the process of placing environmental considerations at the heart of decision-making in other sectoral policies, such as energy and agriculture, rather than leaving them to be pursued separately through purely environmental policy instruments.

The requirement to integrate the needs of the environment into other sectoral policies has been included in the EU Treaties since 1987. The Sixth Environmental Action Programme sets out objectives for putting these goals into practice.

The so-called ‘Cardiff’ process, launched in 1998, targeted the various sectoral configurations of the Council of Ministers, requiring them to produce their own strategies for integrating the environment and sustainable development into their areas of activity. However, in the end even the Commission admitted that the results had been disappointing due to political, institutional and technical factors.

For over 20 years, IEEP has been at the forefront of work to advance EPI. Our key projects and activities have included:

EPIGOV: This EU funded research project brings together 19 institutions from around Europe to explore the modes of governance employed at global, EU, national and regional/local levels to support EPI.

The Future of Europe is everyone’s business and so is the impact of climate action over the decades to come.

The EU has to make sure it is able to tackle the biggest and longest-lasting policy challenge it faces. IEEP, E3G and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Foundation have recently joined forces to make sure climate policy gets more attention as part of the Future of Europe debate launched by the Commission.

IEEP held a one-day conference in Brussels on 5 October 2017 to present the findings of a major study for the European Commission on the use of market-based instruments to address pollution and resource use.

With the Brexit process being formally started, it is time to consider the importance that sharing experience has for the development of concepts and principles in environmental policy says Nigel Haigh, former director of IEEP. Read more in his article here.

In a study for the European Parliament’s REGI Committee, IEEP examined the experience of climate mainstreaming in Cohesion Policy in the current and previous programming periods and identified the implications of the Paris Agreement in order to offer recommendations for future climate mainstreaming in the post-2020 Cohesion Policy.

In the immediate aftermath of President Trump’s decision to leave the Paris agreement, the sixth largest economy of the world, California, signed an agreement with China to fight climate change. While non-binding, such cooperation represents a “trickle-up” approach to global climate change governance and is part of a wave of initiatives from non-state actors including civil society, the private sector and local authorities.

Protecting nature and biodiversity is helping to tackle urgent health and social challenges across Europe. A new IEEP study shows how urban, suburban and rural green areas bring multiple and often overlooked benefits to society.

The March 2016 Beyond GDP newsletter sheds light on the creation of indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals and relates this process to the Europe 2020 and EU Sustainable Development Strategies.